Untold: The Shooting At Hawthorne Hill (2026)

Over the weekend, I watched Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill, and I literally cannot remember the last time I watched a documentary where every single person involved was this deeply unlikable.

And I say that as someone who usually loves documentaries where everyone is at least a little messy.

Now, I know horse people have a certain reputation. Fair or unfair, there’s this stereotype that the world surrounding competitive horses can be intense, dramatic, eccentric, and full of personalities that maybe operate on a slightly different wavelength than the rest of society. This documentary does absolutely nothing to challenge that perception.

In fact, it may actively reinforce it.

Because from beginning to end, this entire story feels like watching two completely unhinged people repeatedly make the worst possible decisions while surrounded by equally chaotic families and enablers. There were moments where I had to pause and ask myself whether there was a single emotionally stable person anywhere within this documentary.

The answer, for me at least, was no.

Actually, correction. The horses seemed lovely.

In fact, they may have been the only truly likable presence in the entire runtime.

That said, even though I found almost everyone involved frustrating, bizarre, exhausting, or outright infuriating, I still think this documentary was absolutely worth watching. Partially because the story itself is wild, but mostly because the trial footage is one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I’ve had in a documentary in a while.

Specifically, watching the shooter during the trial.

Now obviously, everyone involved is going to maintain that his behavior was genuine. But personally? I fully believed I was watching a performance. Not a subtle one either. It genuinely felt like someone attempting to convince the courtroom that he was mentally unstable in the most exaggerated and awkward way possible.

And it was painful to watch.

Not painful because it was emotionally devastating, but painful in the same way secondhand embarrassment is painful. There were multiple moments where his behavior became so theatrical and uncomfortable that the entire thing started feeling surreal. I could not look away because every facial expression and reaction somehow became more bizarre than the last.

At the same time, though, the documentary does a decent job of showing that this situation wasn’t as simple as one completely innocent person crossing paths with one completely evil person. To be very clear, should he have shot her? Absolutely not. Not remotely defensible.

But was she also escalating situations and behaving recklessly? Yes.

And that’s what makes the whole thing feel so chaotic and unsettling. It’s less “good versus evil” and more “what happens when two highly volatile personalities end up trapped in the same orbit long enough for everything to explode.”

The documentary also leans heavily into the surrounding family dynamics, which somehow manage to make the situation feel even stranger. Every time you think you’ve identified the one rational person involved, someone says or does something completely unbelievable, and you’re immediately back at square one.

It starts to feel less like a true crime documentary and more like a social experiment designed to test how much dysfunction one story can contain.

That said, I still think the Untold team did a great job with this installment. The pacing keeps things engaging, the trial footage is undeniably compelling, and even though I found almost everyone involved impossible to root for, I was still fully invested in seeing how everything unfolded.

I also appreciate documentaries that leave you feeling conflicted rather than spoon feeding you a perfectly packaged emotional response. This one definitely falls into that category because by the end, I wasn’t really rooting for anyone. I was mostly just sitting there amazed that all of these people somehow found each other in the first place.

So if you enjoy messy, uncomfortable, personality-driven documentaries where every single person makes you say “what is wrong with you?” at least once, this is definitely worth the watch.

Just prepare yourself to spend ninety minutes feeling increasingly concerned for the horses.